Makers

“A backup copy in my hands?”

“Well, at least I knew you wouldn’t give it up without a fight.” Sammy shrugged and offered her a su

“We’d better go rescue that postcard from the basket before Lester develops a domestic instinct and takes out the trash, then,” Suza

Suza

Sammy treated it like he had his theme park, seeming to take in every detail with a co

“Ms Church,” Francis said gravely. He’d given up drinking, maybe for good, and he was clear-eyed and charming in his engineer’s coveralls. The kids—boys and girls, Suza

“Francis, please meet Sammy and his colleague, Herve. They’re here for a story I’m working on. Gentlemen, Francis is the closest thing we have to a mayor around here.”

Francis shook hands all around, but Sammy’s attention was riveted on the bicycles.

Francis picked one up with two fingers and handed it to him. “Like it? We got the design from a shop in Liberia, but we made our own local improvements. The trick is getting the stiffener to stay liquid long enough to get the fabric stretched out in the right proportion.”

Sammy took the frame from him and spun it in one hand like a baton. “And the wheels?”

“Mostly we do solids, which stay in true longer. We use the carbon stiffener on a pre-cut round of canvas or denim, then fit a standard tire. They go out of true after a while. You just apply some solvent to them and they go soft again and you re-true them with a compass and a pair of tailor’s shears, then re-stiffen them. You get maybe five years of hard riding out of a wheel that way.”

Sammy’s eyes were round as saucers. He took one of the proffered wheels and spun it between opposing fingertips. Then, gri

“I didn’t know you had it in you,” Guignol said, patting him on the shoulder.

Sammy, sweating and gri

“Lots of kids bus into the local schools, or ride. But lots more home-school these days. We don’t get a very high caliber of public school around here.”

“Might that have something to do with all the residents who don’t pay property tax?” Guignol said pointedly.

Suza

They were at her and Lester’s place now. She led them through the front door and picked up the trash-can next to the little table where she sorted the mail after picking it up from her PO box at a little strip mall down the road.

There was the postcard. She handed it silently to Sammy, who held it for a moment, then reluctantly passed it to Guignol. “You’d better hang on to it,” he said, and she sensed that there was something bigger going on there.

“Now we go see Lester,” Suza

He was behind the building in his little workshop, hacking DiaBolical. There were five different DiaBs ru

“Lester,” Suza

Lester straightened up from his keyboard and wiped his palms and turned to face them. He knew who they were based on his earlier conversation with Suza

“You!” he said. “You work for Disney?”

Sammy blushed and looked away.

Lester turned to Suza

Sammy nodded and mumbled something. Lester reached out and snapped off the AC, filling the room with eerie silence and stifling heat. “What was that?”

“I’m a great believer in competitive intelligence.”

“You work for Disney?”

“They both work for Disney, Lester,” Suza

“That’s right,” Sammy said, seeming to come to himself at last. “And it’s an honor to formally meet you at last. I run the DiaB program. I see you’re a fan. I’ve read quite a bit about you, of course, thanks to Ms Church here.”

Lester’s hands closed and opened, closed and opened. “You were, what, you were sneaking around here?”

“Have I mentioned that I’m a great fan of your work? Not just the ride, either. This DiaBolical, well, it’s—”

“What are you doing here?”

Suza

“Lester,” she said, putting her hand on his warm shoulder. “Do you want to show these guys what you’re working on?”

He blew air through his nose a couple times, then settled down. He even smiled.

“This one,” he said, pointing to a DiaBolical, “I’ve got it ru

Suza

“This one,” Lester continued, patting a DiaB that was open to the elements, its imps lounging in its guts, “we mix some serious epoxy in with it, some carbon fibers. The printouts are practically indestructible. There are some kids around here who’ve been using it to print parts for bicycles—”

“Those were printed on this?” Sammy said.

“We ran into Francis and his gang,” Suza

Lester nodded. “Yeah, it’s not perfect, though. The epoxy clogs up the works and the imps really don’t like it. I only get two or three days out of a printer after I convert it. I’m working on changing the mix to fix that, though.”

“After all,” Guignol noted sourly, “it’s not as if you have to pay for new DiaBs when you break one.”

Lester smiled nastily at him. “Exactly,” he said. “We’ve got a great research subsidy around here.”